E-textbook company Kno has popped out a press release saying that it found 95% of college students who used its e-textbook application “found it very useful and plan to use it again”. The company conducted a study with four California community colleges, on 400 students and faculty in 27 classes using an open-source statistics textbook. "It is exciting to see the book brought to life through digital enhancements by Kno," said Barbara Illowsky, a Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, De Anza College [and co-author of the statistics textbook]. "The student feedback reinforces the need for...

Google today released the complete source code to Android version 4.0.1 (Ice Cream Sandwich), the version that will ship with the Galaxy Nexus. The code includes a build target for compiling the OS for the Galaxy Nexus, and other device configurations will be added later. The code tree includes the source code for Honeycomb, as well, though Google would prefer people to focus on Ice Cream Sandwich now. This release will be helpful for those who want to develop software for the Android, as well as those who would like to port it to various other devices that do...

Every so often, a story comes along that makes you go, “…what? No, really…what?” In the wake of the HP TouchPad fire sale, some mysterious TouchPad units appeared that were running a version of Android 2.2, with a splash screen bearing the logo QuIC, referring to the Qualcomm Innovation Center, a subsidiary of Qualcomm that works on adapting open-source software for products made by Qualcomm and its partners. One of these tablets sold on eBay for $1,425. Needless to say, a lot of Android users have been anxious to get their hands on the source code associated with...

Betabeat has interviewed magazine design icon Roger Black, who over the last few decades has been responsible for redesigns of a number of well-known magazines (including Rolling Stone, New York, the New York Times Magazine, and Newsweek. To say that Black is “famous” in the magazine design scene would be like calling Michael Jackson “well-known”. Black says that he is “flabbergasted” by how many people have bought iPads, “and even more so how the publishing industry thought it was some kind of magic pony that would save them.” But even so, Black seems to be adapting to the...

David Pogue, in an article in Scientific American looks at comparisons between open source and proprietary technology over the years, trying to determine which is better.  It doesn't actually include ebook devices in its examination, but it easily could have. As it is, it compares the Apple vs Microsoft early days, the early music player days (again, mostly Apple vs Microsoft), and now the phone wars (in the article's take, primarily an iPhone vs Google war). The article, however, fails to identify a clear winner: It describes wins on both fronts over the years, and leaves the present phone war up in...

When I saw the article in Google Reader, I had already clicked “mark as read” before going, “…what?” and hastily going back to see if I’d read what I thought I’d read. Ars Technica has a piece on the Overbite Project, an open-source effort to bring the Gopher format to modern computers which already has an alpha release for Android devices. Gopher is the hypertext network protocol that was in use before the development of the World Wide Web. I still remember using it back at college in the early ‘90s to find information on the...

CNet reports that Apple and Microsoft are assembling a patent portfolio to challenge the legality of open-source video codec Ogg Theora. Theora competes against the h.264 video codec that Microsoft and Apple are supporting as part of their HTML5 strategy. "A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other 'open source' codecs now," Jobs wrote in the e-mail, which Apple did not immediately confirm as authentic. "Unfortunately, just because something is open source, it doesn't mean or guarantee that it doesn't infringe on others' patents." This may not immediately seem...

Last week, we covered Cory Doctorow’s rant against the closed nature of the iPad. Lately, a number of responses have emerged to Doctorow and others who hold similar opinions: “You may not like it, but it’s progress.” Steven Johnson, author of a forthcoming book Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, has an essay in the New York Times in which he considers the matter. Johnson points out the strange contradiction that, in a world where open development platforms are regarded to be the best “generative” environment for diversity and innovation, the closed...

CNet reports that a Millward Brown study shows that Amazon ranks as the most trusted and recommended brand in the United States. It’s not terribly surprising; When you have a company that operates smoothly enough that most people not directly affected by them are willing to overlook those times when it accidentally or intentionally delists books or removes them from user devices, it has to be doing something right. TechFlash reports that Microsoft and Amazon have signed a cross-patent-licensing agreement, where each company gains the rights to use the other’s patent portfolio. The deal indemnifies Amazon against a...

The Chinese snooped on Google and certain Gmail users, along with a number of other U.S. companies, including Adobe. Now the “Do no evil” boys will no longer censor search engine results---something that, as a very small Google shareholder, I think they should have stopped doing long before this. Google may even end up leaving China. So what does it all mean from an e-book angle? A bunch of questions arise, and I’d welcome some perspective from TeleRead community members. --Will this affect Google digitization of Chinese books, and how? Google currently seems on the verge...

A recent law journal essay referenced on this site examined Digital Rights Management and its impact on the e-book industry. DRM, the essay said, is counter to the precepts of open-source development in computer hardware and software, thereby hindering innovation and slowing technological progress in the e-book industry. The implicit assumption is that open-source is good for innovation in the computer industry in general, and especially in the e-book industry. But is it? Has open source been a positive influence on e-book development? Or has open source itself hindered the progress of e-books, DRM notwithstanding? ...

As reported here a few days ago, Amazon recently released a bundle of source code for the Kindle DX. This has led to some confusion in the blogging community (including, perhaps, here) about what the source code release means. Ars Technica clears up the confusion in its usual informative way. The source code released is not the entire source code for the Kindle, but rather the code of changes to the open portions of the Kindle that Amazon is required to release by the terms of the GPL (GNU Public License, the license under which most components of...